Posted on 02/17/2013 5:36:36 AM PST by reaganaut1
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Over the past decade, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands have paid more than $130 million to terrorist groups, mostly through mediators, to free European hostages.
European leaders were understandably desperate to save the lives of their citizens. But their efforts have backfired because the paying of ransoms has merely turned their citizens into a lucrative commodity for cash-hungry jihadis. Groups like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa have grown accustomed to ransom payments and reacted by seeking to capture as many Europeans — from aid workers to volunteers to tourists — as they could. In contrast, terrorists know that America won’t negotiate with hostage-takers and is much more likely to use force to free its citizens.
This problem was festering long before NATO’s intervention in Libya. In 2009, Salima Tlemcani, a journalist at the Algerian newspaper El Watan and an expert on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, reported that cash payments were being used by terrorists to purchase weapons and telecommunications equipment. In a report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Wolfram Lacher pointed to ransom money as “a main driver of A.Q.I.M.’s growth.”
A former American ambassador to Mali, Vicki J. Huddleston, told the British newspaper The Telegraph, “Everyone is pretty much aware that money has passed hands indirectly through different accounts and it ends in the treasury, let us say, of the A.Q.I.M.” Ransom money, she said, “allowed A.Q.I.M. to grow strong, buy weapons and recruit.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This has been going on for centuries. The Europeans have been paying tribute to the muslims through various treaties and organizations since the Crusades. The colonies lost this “protection” once they became independent, and actually negotiated several “treaties” to pay tribute to the north African countries to protect shipping. Thomas Jefferson argued for years against this, and once elected President, effectively stopped this, through the Barbary Wars. The U.S. Navy was recommissioned in 1794 expressly to protect shipping interests in the Mediterranean and elsewhere from muslim pirates.
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